Booking system outage forces Russian airlines to cancel some flights, ministry says

MOSCOW, Jan 26 (Reuters) - Russian airlines were forced to cancel some flights on Monday due to a nationwide outage of the Leonardo booking system which has since been fixed, the transport ministry said.

All major Russian airlines, including national flag carrier Aeroflot AFLT.MM, had earlier warned of possible schedule disruptions, including changes to departure times and flight cancellations.

The transport ministry in a statement did not name the affected carriers or destinations, but said officials would meet later on Monday "to analyse what happened and minimise the impact of the disruption on passengers."

Russian state industrial conglomerate Rostec said that the problem in the Leonardo booking system had been caused by an "internal technical problem" at its provider, Sirena Travel.

Aeroflot was hit by a major cyberattack in July last year, disrupting travel across the world's biggest country. Two Ukrainian hacking groups claimed responsibility for that attack at the time.